Atheists vs. Islamists in Melbourne, Australia: the video

On April 13, a group of Islamists in traditional Muslim garb showed up outside the Melbourne Convention Centre in Australia to protest the Global Atheist Convention.

The atheists, unafraid of confrontation, poured out of the conference to counter-protest the Islamists.

Luckily, the whole thing was captured on video for your entertainment:

Until recently, atheists seem to have mostly defined themselves in opposition to Christianity, but Christopher Hitchens opened a new front in the atheists’ battlefield, making it now OK to challenge Islam as well.

It could be that this scene is more than just a humorous bagatelle, but is instead a preview of the coming global conflict — not between Muslims and Christians, as everyone has long assumed, but between Muslims and secularists.

(And for those who prefer the traditional enemies butting heads, a Christian group posted their own long video of a separate incident in which they preached to the attendees; unlike the Islamists, the Australian Christians at least had a sense of humor about the whole thing.)

Click here to view the 34 legacy comments

Click here to hide legacy comments

34 Comments, 8 Threads

1.
Morton Doodslag

Yeah, Dream on Zombi — Love your stuff, but this is naive. — just watch what happens when one group (I won’t say which one) begins to blow up and behead the other group.

It will be no different than it was right after 9/11; the Left barely skipped a beat before they were redoubling their hatred against America, white civilization, Christian “Crusaders”, Zonists, etc. That’s who they blamed for the atrocity hatched at the highest levels in the Muslim/Arab capitals of Crapistan. Remember the kaffiyas on all the MoveOn.org traitors? Remember the Muslim fascists joining the secular fascists and making common cause? Remember how America was turned from victim into the aggressor?

The only reason the Leftist traitors/cowards in these videos are “standing up” to the small band of Muslim traitors/fascists is because … wait for it … IT’S A SMALL BAND OF MUSLIMS and the Lefty traitors outnumber them about 10 or 20 to one. Those Leftists can pose all they want — pretend they’re “authentic” — pretend they’re Che Guevara — but when the scimitars come out — when the videos of the beheadings start — these Leftist traitors will remain the cowards they are — the only form of “speaking truth to power” from them will look like it did after 9/11 — accusing everyone on their “nice enemy list” like Christians, Patriotic Americans, capitalists, capitalism, Zionists, etc. Leftism and their conceits is an etiolated and blasted weapon against genuine Muslim terrorism.

I can’t follow your reasoning, perhaps you could explain – why are atheists leftist traitors? I suspect you are making the classic assumption that all communists are supposed to be athiest therefore all atheists are commies, or some derivative of that.

For myself, I don’t believe in God and I am pretty firmly conservative in my political leanings. From my athiest perspective, you are free to believe in whatever you want – I really don’t mind – but don’t try and force me to believe it as well.

You make a fair point – and it was perhaps a bit of a leap, but not without some substantiation I think. I was speaking in broad terms and yes of course Commies and Lefties MUST defame and destroy the West’s religious heritage in order to impose their Utopia – yhey are radical atheists – what other kind would you suggest attends an actual “Atheist Convention”?!

My inference is also based on my own life experience, but would you at least agree, looking at Zombie’s tape, that the comportment of the atheists along with some shaggy hair, sloganeering, etc evoke #OWS, MoveOn.org and citizen-of-the-world lefty types???

But t least this crowd is anti-Jihad, and that is a huge plus. We wouldn’t be in nearly so much trouble if liberals and Lefties actually stood up against Islamic fascism, but THAT is something we rarely ever see. We are much more likely to see radical atheistic types joining arms with Muslm fascists, wearing kaffiyehs in solidarity, etc. and aiming their shared hatred against western civilization … Make any sense?

“Until recently, atheists seem to have mostly defined themselves in opposition to Christianity…”

You’re judging an entire idealogy based on its loudest and most confrontational individuals. That’s every bit as flawed as if I assumed all Jews are Hasidic or all Christians are of the “700 Club” mentality.

What in fact defines most athiests is the desire to let everyone practice their religion while being free to not have those beliefs imposed upon us. And really, I think that’s perfectly reasonable.

So all Christians think homosexuals should be put to death, US soldiers deserve to be killed and their families mocked at the funerals and we should rewrite the Constitution to allow them to impose a theocracy that executes abortion providers.

@ But are homosexuals put to death in the western world? Certainly not. But that wouldn’t be case in Atheist China and North Korea. They’ll be sent to gulags. In western Christian societies people have freedom of speech and the rest law will take it’s course. However thats not the case in Atheist states. By the way how do you know what is right and wrong?. No such values can be derived from Atheism.

Zac, values are not derived from “atheism”. Proper values and ethics are derived from the facts of reality, from the facts of human nature and the nature of everything we humans have to deal with. You may think that religious morality was presented by revelation to humnas by God, but more likely it was derived from human efforts to live together productively instead of killing each other, stealing from each other, etc. Do you really mean to say that ethics and other values cannot be derived reasonably from reality? Are you saying that morality is irrational, to be accepted not by a reasoning mind but by an obedient, unreasoning one?

Avi Shafran has neatly addressed the issue of Atheist morality/ethics in “Indignity of Atheism”

Excerpt

“Atheism, in the end, is a belief system in its own right, one in which there can be no claim that a thieving, philandering, serial murdering cannibal is any less commendable a member of the species than a selfless, hard-working philanthropist. In fact, from an evolutionist perspective, the former may well have the advantage.

To a true atheist, there can be no more ultimate meaning to good and bad actions than to good or bad weather; no more import to right and wrong than to right and left. To be sure, rationales might be conceived for establishing societal norms, but social contracts are practical tools, not moral imperatives; they are, in the end, artificial. Only an acknowledgement of the Creator can impart true meaning to human life, placing it on a plane above that of mosquitoes.”

Could you name the Christian group that thought/thinks “homosexuals should be put to death”. Not even the Westboro loons have advocated that; they said they’re “going to hell if they don’t stop it” sure, but they’ve never advocated killing them.
As a matter of fact, I can’t recall any sect/denomination/church killing people for homosexual behavior as a matter of doctrine, ever, throughout 2000 years of history. Even in the madness of the Spanish Inquisition they didn’t bother with it, preferring to focus on “heretics” instead.
And no, quoting verses from Leviticus won’t cut it. Only demagogues deliberately ignoring “the New Covenant” that Christians adhere to, trot out that argument.

“but prosecutions are rare because the standard of proof requires that offenders be caught in the act.

David Bahati, the legislator sponsoring the bill, told the AP he was encouraging “constructive criticism” to improve the law but insisted strict measures were necessary to stop homosexuals from “recruiting” schoolchildren.

High school teacher David Kisambira agreed with Bahati’s assessment, telling the Associated Press, “A good number of students have been converted into gays. We hear there are groups of people given money by some gay organizations in developed countries to recruit youth into gay activities.”

One of those participants, preacher Scott Lively (who writes books suggesting ways parents can keep homosexuals from “recruiting” their children), told the AP he “Agreed with the general goal but the law is far too harsh.”

And while many observers opine this anti-homosexuality bill is mere political theater”

Rob, if you’re concerned with justice, then in forming your opinion of any broad social group you should not focus only on the noisiest. The noisiest are USUALLY not the majority anyway.

Do the New Black Panthers define black Americans? Does Al Sharpton define them? He’s damned noisy. But Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Shelby Steele are quiet, scholarly types, with plenty to say and a civil way of saying it. And they do not at all agree with the Panthers or the likes of Sharpton. But if I allowed the noisiest blacks to define the image of black Americans for me, I wouldn’t waste my time reading black writers like those three gentlemen. I’d assume the worst.

There are plenty of freedom-loving, rights-upholding atheists who have no desire to force anyone to submit to atheism. There are atheists who have written and spoken up for liberty with such dedication that they have made a career of it: Ayn Rand, Tara Smith, Andrew Bernstein, Yaron Brooke… and many more. But they aren’t loud-mouths. Just as with judging blacks by loudmouths like the Panthers and Sharpton without taking into consideration thinkers like Sowell, Williams, and Steele (and others), you have to be willing to take a look around if you want to come to a just, and therefore ethical, conclusion.

“but prosecutions are rare because the standard of proof requires that offenders be caught in the act.

David Bahati, the legislator sponsoring the bill, told the AP he was encouraging “constructive criticism” to improve the law but insisted strict measures were necessary to stop homosexuals from “recruiting” schoolchildren.

High school teacher David Kisambira agreed with Bahati’s assessment, telling the Associated Press, “A good number of students have been converted into gays. We hear there are groups of people given money by some gay organizations in developed countries to recruit youth into gay activities.”

One of those participants, preacher Scott Lively (who writes books suggesting ways parents can keep homosexuals from “recruiting” their children), told the AP he “Agreed with the general goal but the law is far too harsh.”

And while many observers opine this anti-homosexuality bill is mere political theater”

Barrone, I’m an atheist myself, but I have pretty many Christian and Jewish friends and acquaintances. They seem to be living pretty productive, decent lives. I certainly can’t consider them to be wasting their lives! After all, I consider them worth spending time with, and they consider me worth some time as well. I do not find these good people to be dumbassed idiots at all.

Also, I don’t believe religion started as a scam. I think it was a natural development of human nature, when faced with a hostile, dangerous natural and human world and the insecurities of dealing with the unknown. As societies or their leaders discovered rules and principles to guide them through life’s difficulties, crediting this guidance as coming from a god or gods was a way of endowing it with a magical authority that could make adherence to the rules more attractive to the less morally inclined. The leaders and prophets who presented their fellow men with this guidance may well have believed that these moral laws were indeed divinely inspired. And, although I do not believe in a god in any literal sense, I would say that those ethical principles of honesty,integrity, reason, and respect for the right of each person to his own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, *are* divine in the sense of being necessary to achieving the highest moral stature that a human can attain. Whether those values come from a God or from the nature of reality, they do deserve to be considered as good as from God – from the highest source – as principles that should be loved and practiced as the highest of values.

Stalin, Hitler, Marx, Mao et al had no religion. They were Atheists. But they ended up unleashing the most vicious barbarity on humanity in the name of Atheist utopia. And it costed us 300 million precious lives of men, women and kids. Atheism is the most violent ideology to visit planet earth.

All religions have long, bloody histories of not just widespread campaigns of murder against non-believers, but gruesome torture as well. This is necessary (to religion) because each espouses that theirs is the only true religion and their holy books proscribe that non-believers must be either converted or killed.

Religion is responsible for the reprehensible practice of child genital mutilation – I cannot fathom a more sinister, violent tendency than cutting up a defenceless infant’s genitalia for the purpose of dulling their sexual function. Exercise your own right to practice your religion as you see fit, but don’t inflict it on me, or your children until they are old enough to make their own decisions about their future.

The trick is just lump Christianity with Islam and there you have a tool to attack Christianity. But readers can see through this deception. Marky the truth is:

“Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.

It’s time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.”

“Exercise your own right to practice your religion as you see fit, but don’t inflict it on me, or your children until they are old enough to make their own decisions about their future.”

How about Atheist practice what they preach? Why brainwash kids with Atheist ideology? Why send them to Atheist Sunday Schools? Why send them to Atheist boot camps? Why don’t you allow them to make their own mind when they grow up?

You’re drawing an unbelieveably false equivalence. Atrocites have been committed by atheists but never, to my knowledge, in the name of atheism. I seriously doubt you can name a single mass-murdering dictator whose rallying cry was to declare war on religion. They’ve usually committed their crimes in the name of some form of socialism and didn’t care about religion at all except insofar as religion provided competition for their power.

Religious fanatics, on the other hand, have very specifically undertaken torture and murder to please whatever god they pray to.

“Down with religion and long live atheism; the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!” Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin)

and the rest is history – millions of men, women and children were butchered by Atheists!!

So no one was killed in the name of Athiesm? Really? Forget the Atheist Communists and Atheist French Jacobines for the moment. Check out the new Atheist Star – Finnish darwihadist (Atheist Jihadist) Pekka, who killed 7 school students for Atheism:

“a cynical existentialist, anti-human humanist, anti-social social-Darwinist, realistic idealist and god-like ATHEIST. “I am prepared to fight and die for my cause,” he wrote. “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.” Pekka Eric Auvinen

Zac, and all the others in this thread: It’s no use arguing about whether atheists or theists have had the most horrendous histories of mass murder and torture. It’s not whether you believe in a god or not that leads you to uphold an individual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but whether or not you respect the individual’s right to think for himself and pursue the truth, make his own judgments and errors, within the constraints of respecting all others’right to do the same. Atheism is simply the view that there is no proof of the existence of a god or gods, and since the atheist is not convinced he cannot honestly make himself believe. There is no particular philosophy that goes with that – Marxism is a very different philosophy from Objectivism, for example. But the former seeks to subordinate the individual to the collective and force a conformity of philosophy on all of society through the coercive power of the state. It ignores the needs of the human mind and undermines the very thing that makes life worth living to an honest thinker. Objectivism is founded on the need of the individual to continually gather information and keep his mind honest and in touch with reality, so that he can guide himself by his own honest understanding and judgment. In a society that respects that need of human intelligence and self respect, the initiation of force and the use of fraud is banned from human interactions. People can disagree with each other profoundly in such a society, but as long as they don’t resort to force and fraud, they are protected to go about their business in their own ways and to believe what they think is so, whatever that may be (and to change their minds if they discover an error in their thinking).

If all the atheists on earth got together and built a fleet of spaceships to leave earth forever, would the theists left behind all be able to breathe a sigh of relief and live in a peaceful paradise with each other?

No. There would be factions of various levels of rationality and respect for rights. There would be socialist/welfare-statist Christians and libertarian Christians, there may even be a Christian faction who believes in stoning homosexuals and executing abortion doctors, and others who think abortion isn’t murder in the first trimester, and a faction that believes it’s their duty to take the Holy Land from the Muslims,and others who think the Holy Land should be left alone and that only Muslims intent on jihad should be fought, and others who think that even self defense is wrong and that “turning the other cheek” is meant as an unbreachable rule, so they go live in an isolated community and wear special clothes and ride in buggies. And there would be Mormons who reject polygamy, and those who still want to practice it, and other Christians who want it outlawed … And Muslims who want to force the whole world under Sharia law, because Allah is the one true god, etc., and the Jewish and Christian texts have distorted and corrupted Allah’s laws. Mohammad is the “Seal of the Prophets” and what was revealed to him was the original Word that has been distorted by the corruptions of the “People of the Book”. Etc. And there would be other Muslims who just want to practice Islam in their own part of the world and leave everyone else alone, and yet other “ethnic” Muslims who like the modern world and don’t really want to submit to Sharia and are only superficially Muslim. One group has different revelations from the other groups. Some groups are more rational and tolerant than others. The only way to judge which is better than the others is by applying reason. The most reasonable, reality-compliant version of religion is the best. That would be the one that comes closest to recognizing that a human being has to seek the truth through his own mental efforts and honesty, and that force and fraud are the enemies of that proper effort and honesty.

So how about those atheists out there in space? Heh-heh. They’ve found a planet compatible with human life, but look at them! Those Marxists and Objectiivists and secular libertarians and existentialists and nihilists are NOT getting along at all! The anarcho-capitalists are all forming their private police organization, and the Objectivists and minimal-government libertarians are forming a single government in a particular geographical area whose purpose is to protect individual rights and outlaw force and fraud… but they view the anarcho-capitalists’ private police force model as a threat to peace, expecting that it will quickly break down into a gang-warfare state. So the anarcho-capitalists aren’t allowed into that geographical area with their private police and armies… But the Objectivists and minimal government libertarians happen to have settled the most fertile and desirable area on the planet… except for the great farmland on which the Marxists have formed a big commune. But that commune has been going for a while now and the no-private-property thing is not going that well. It’s the Plymouth Colony all over again, and they’re all hungry and skinny and everybody is hating each other and getting friggin’ bored… but look at all those goodies over there in Objective Libertaria! The Marxists are wondering how they can get them some of that without becoming greedy capitalists? Oh dear!

And the anarcho-capitaists are eyeing the Marxists’ fertile but failing land…

Yeah. The religious people who set up a free-market, free-thinking zone are going to prosper the most on earth, and they’re going to have a battle against the Christians and Muslims and any other theist group who thinks God wants it done some other way. And it’s ditto for the Atheists on that distant planet, except for that “God wants it” part.

Because human beings have this thing called a brain that grasps reality by a certain process that requires effort and is not infallible. Plus humans can choose to be honest with themselves or to fool themselves. About all sorts of things. We come to different conclusions. We clash.

And the best system to deal with this fact of human nature is the one that respects the facts of human intelligence in the law and draws a line between one person and the next – a line forbidding the initiation of force and fraud in human relations.

I reckon the right kind of Theists and the right kind of Atheists can live together in peace just fine, with a minor amount of clash handled without bloodshed.

It’s the people who think control through initiation of force and fraud is a good plan that are the real enemy.

Time to stop preaching to us. All that is left for the Atheists to do is come up with an International Day of Apology and ask forgiveness from the religious – mainly Christians for the 300 million men, women and children that was killed to spread Atheist utopia.

While I strongly reject Islamic ideology, Muslims have every reason to protest. Well, Atheists have declared fatwa on Muslims. What they are calling for is the mass slaughter of Muslims. I am not sure how Atheists are any different from their enemies. Except that, like that past Atheists doesn’t need a god to carry out their atrocities against humanity. Have a read of Hitchens fatwa on Muslims:

“The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties. Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again.” (excerpts, “Freedom from Religion Convention”)

@Zac
Hitchens was describing the means by which wars are won, Zac. He wasn’t advocating genocide at all. Victory in war is achieved when one nation imposes its political will on another nation using military force. Simply put: one nation kills enough of its enemies to make another nation submit. If “Professor” PZ Meyers doesn’t understand that Hitchens was merely stating how victory against Islamists will be achieved, then he is a half wit of epic proportions.

So when you Atheists don’t get your way you just abuse people. You (militant Atheists) are as ignorant as the militant Muslims. I can’t see it any other way. I’ll believe Atheist Prof. PZ. Myers – who was at Atheist Convention – over you. 20th century tells me you guys are more dangerous than Islamists.

In the Muslim world, which never went through the Enlightenment, it’s either abuse or be abused, oppress or be oppressed. They are dragging the rest of us down to their level, and we don’t have much of a choice. And I for one am not putting up with being oppressed by them.

Zac, I strongly doubt that Hitchens was advocating genocide. I don’t know anything about Prof. PZ Myers, what kind of rivalry he might have with Hitchens, and whether or not he’s an appeaser of Islamism who thinks we can negotiate our way into a lasting peaceful co-existence with Islamist states and their terrorists.

It could be that he has a political reason to smear or misunderstand Hitchens as a believer in genocide. But I don’t know.

I am more inclined to believe that Herr Wilson is correct – that Hitchens was describing what it will probably come to as Islamists gain more power and nuclear weapons, which they are in the process of doing with virtually nothing to stop them, except possibly the Israeli air force. You cannot negotiate successfully with Islamist fanatics who believe that it is the will of Allah to bring the whole human race under the domination of Islam, just as Hitler could not be stopped by negotiation and appeasement. Eventually the allies had to flatten the Nazis and the Japanese – not with genocide, which is the wiping out of a entire race or cultural group for reasons other than self-defense – but with decisive military force that was sufficient to convince them that resistance was futile.

It doesn’t matter, then, that there were plenty of Nazis or Emperor worshippers left in those countries. They had learned the lesson that attacking other countries and enslaving people of other nationalities and races was not going to be tolerated, and that to survive and prosper they were going to have to conform to the laws of civilized human interaction.

Those Muslims who aim to impose Sharia law on the whole human race, and to do so through violence, are no different from the Nazis or the Communists who attempted to enslave Europe and their own countries by violence. We didn’t have to wipe out all Germans or all Japanese to stop the Nazis and the Imperialists, but we did have to kill an awful lot of them before they would stop. That’s just the way it is.

And I know for a fact that there are a huge number of Christians who agree with me.

“Then it was Hitchens at his most bellicose. He told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now — Rudy Giuliani — and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties.

It was simplistic us-vs.-them thinking at its worst, and the only solution he had to offer was death and destruction of the enemy.

This was made even more clear in the Q&A. He was asked to consider the possibility that bombing and killing was only going to accomplish an increase in the number of people opposing us. Hitchens accused the questioner of being incredibly stupid (the question was not well-phrased, I’ll agree, but it was clear what he meant), and said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you … which is only true if you assume that every Moslem already wants to kill Americans and is armed and willing to do so. I think that what is obvious is that most Moslems are primarily interested in living a life of contentment with their families and their work, and that an America committed to slaughter is a tactic that will only convince more of them to join in opposition to us.

Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again.”

It’s the battle of the fanatics. Yeah, I know your average atheist isn’t a fanatic, they are just regular people. But your “average atheist”, the guy you work next to, doesn’t go to “Atheist Conventions”. Those are where the militant atheists go, to bitch about how evil religion and religious people are. Your average Joe atheist is too busy going to his kid’s little league game, or working out at the gym, or doing whatever else that normal people do in their daily lives. But it’s the militant atheists (now called “New Atheists) who go to ridiculous Conventions, or hang out on religion forums on the Internet badgering and harassing religious people, those guys have actually turned atheism into a religion, and one that is every bit as intolerant of “others” as militant Islam. Granted, they don’t kill “infidels”, but they do despise them, anyone who’s been around the intolerant New Atheists on the Internet will vouch for that.

Atheists have much to worry with Islam. In an Islamic state, atheists, polytheists and idolators are not allowed the tolerance of the Islamic state. For them it is conversion or death (death can be commuted to enslavement). Polytheists eventually were admitted as second class citizens, dhimmis, just like Jews and Christians were allowed as dhimmis, but not atheists. Read Bernard Lewis The Multiple Identities of the Middle East. It explains more on how Islam divides the world – who is tolerated to a limit. Look at all the ex-Muslim atheists in Islamic states, how they are persecuted.